McCaw named director of Athletics

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

Ian McCaw (Sarah Buchholz photo)

lumnus Ian McCaw was named the campus's fifth permanent director of Athletics July 15.

      McCaw, who received a master's degree in Sport Management in 1987, hails from Northeastern University, where he has served as director of intercollegiate athletics and campus recreation for five years. He also served the athletics department at Tulane University in several ways over a two-year period: as senior associate director for development and associate director for external affairs, and as acting director in 1996.

     In addition to his work at Northeastern and Tulane, McCaw worked in a number of areas at the University of Maine between 1986 and 1992, including sports information director and assistant athletic director for external affairs.

     He is on the NCAA Division I men's ice hockey committee and the executive committees for America East, Atlantic 10 Football, Hockey East, and the National Consortium for Academics and Sports. He previously served on America East committees on gender equity, sporting conduct, men's basketball, baseball, and championships.

     "His exceptional record of success and the high regard in which he is held by so many in the profession of intercollegiate athletics speak to the many qualities that recommend him to us," said Chancellor John V. Lombardi.

     "As an alumnus, this opportunity certainly has a special significance to me," McCaw said. "I will handle my duties with great pride and great passion as we endeavor to move this athletic program forward in the years to come. I believe we have a very bright future, and I'm anxious to get started and see what unfolds.

     "I want this to be a very student-athlete oriented program. I want the student-athletes to derive a very high quality experience here. We need to be successful in ensuring that they graduate, that they have a good experience and become productive alumni. We have a wonderful coaching staff in place here, one of the tremendous assets that we have. Obviously the success that many of the programs have enjoyed are reflective of the quality of the great work they've done."

     "The search committee ... was looking for an individual with a demonstrated track record of success in working with intercollegiate athletic programs, somebody who had done the various parts of the intercollegiate program enterprise," Lombardi said. "One of the things about intercollegiate athletics is that there are a lot of parts to it, and you need to know about them all.

     "It's not enough to know just about fund-raising, it's not enough just to know about managing the budget, it's not enough to know just about managing the relationships with the conference, it's not enough to know just what the sports are; you have to do it all. And so we were looking for people in particular who had this kind of broad experience and could speak to the kind of issues we have."

     Lombardi said the search committee also considered whose talents would complement existing strengths in the Athletics staff.

     "This is not a program that was invented yesterday," he said. "This is a program with great depth and strength in its coaching staff and in its administrative staff. It's a program with an extraordinary set of records to its name. It's a program that has had remarkable support from its students and its institution.

     "While we have all this strength, we also have a set of challenges. The financial base for intercollegiate athletics depends [not only on students and the institution, but] also on the support that can be generated from alumni, from friends, from people who attend games, from sponsors. There's all kinds of people that we want to talk to who need to be engaged in this program, so fund-raising is a critical part of the ... future success ... of this institution."

     "Fund-raising is something I enjoy very much," McCaw said. "I've had quite a bit of experience ... the last five years at Northeastern, building up our development program, also as a development officer at Tulane for two years. It's something I very much enjoy; I view it as an extension of my personality. It's a matter of connecting a donor's interest with your programmatic needs. I think [growing the donor base] is a big part of my job and, really, all of our jobs. We've got to reach more people and connect them with the University. That's how programs flourish."

     McCaw said Athletics needs to reach out to alumni and friends in the Boston area, in particular.

     "We're going to have to work extremely hard at putting together attractive alumni events around the athletic contests that we have there. One of the great assets that I feel we have is we are the University of Massachusetts; we're the flagship campus in the commonwealth. And I think we need to maybe do a better job of reminding the state of that and really promoting ourselves as Massachusetts' team.

     "We [also] need to connect effectively with all of the different constituencies on this campus. Sometimes athletic departments become an island unto themselves within a university community, and that's not a good formula. We have to work hard to connect with all the different areas of campus to garner their support, as well."

     "In addition to all the things we've talked about here, intercollegiate athletics is about winning," Lombardi said. "Nobody wants to lose sight of that. We're going to do all the things that make student athletes have a great experience, ...that connect intercollegiate athletics to the campus and to the larger constituency. Along with doing that, and as the vehicle for doing that, our coaches and our students are going to win. They're going to win games, they're going to win tournaments, they're going to win championships, and we're all going to celebrate their tremendous success every place we go.

     "So I'm really looking forward to going to a lot of games and making a lot of noise. I think it's going to be a hell of a good time. Go UMass!"